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This blog represents the classroom within myself where I learn from living life. Sometimes messy, sometimes challenging, sometimes beautiful. Always discovering a lesson to be learned. Thanks for stopping by.

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On Bulgaria: Life Beyond The Wall, part 5 of 5

This post is the fifth in a five-part series: On Bulgaria: Life Beyond The Wall. Need to catch up? Read parts one, two, three and four.

Image created by: Diane Mora using Paper 53Quote by: Pico Ilyer

Afterword

Lest the reader (or my teammates) think that Bulgaria represents the completion of a journey for me, little could be further from the truth.

My future employer did indeed wait (im)patiently for my return, and I joyfully and wholeheartedly accepted a contract with the firm belief that somehow I will find a way to make up a loss of income created by the change. I simply could not refuse this chance to directly impact the educational advancement of high school students who are also learning the English language, and especially English learners who have most often experienced limited or interrupted formal education due to their experiences of resettlement to the United States under refugee status.

With the courage to make this return to the classroom full-time, I’m fulfilling a dream of being a writer who is also a teacher of writing.

Although I hope that traveling abroad to a refugee camp might one day be in my future, for now I’m content working in a culturally dissimilar area of my own city with the realization that it may prove just as challenging and just as impactful.

And finally, although one should not try to plan against what the Universe has in store, super long-range I would like to examine how the internet might be used to help connect U.S. teachers with understaffed camp teachers for purposes of better preparing pre-arrival students with academic English skills, thus reducing the barrier to educational opportunity before it ever has a chance to erect itself. So many walls…

(Hey, Ken. Remember when I said, my life is a vacation? I was serious.)

The End…or…The Beginning of the Next Chapter 🙂

This is the last post in the 5-part series On Bulgaria: Life Beyond The Wall.

Thanks for reading!

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Diane Mora

I am a writer (poetry, memoir, creative nonfiction, blogging) and teacher currently living in the Kansas CIty metropolitan area. A National Writer’s Project Writing Teacher Consultant, my method developing writing skills through the lens of personal narrative with low literate students has been highly effective with adults and secondary students who are migrants or refugees to the U.S.
I have given many workshops about my methods to educators across Missouri and will be presenting my techniques to educators in Spain in September 2016. In addition to pencil-paper writing, I have also successfully integrated the use of digital writing tools such as digital storyboards into my practice.
“I believe it’s not enough to simply tell our life stories. It’s important to also share a nugget of wisdom in our writing that might inspire or empower the reader as well as the writer. The concluding paragraph in every writer’s essay contains a “wisdom statement” that is based on something the writer has gleaned from his or her experience of living and now wants to share with others. When students are encouraged to think of their life experience as a learning experience, sharing this wisdom provides a sense of purpose that is highly motivating.” -- Diane Mora
I can be reached at:
Linked In: Diane Mora
Twitter: @classroomwithin
Blog: www.classroomwithin.org
Full resume and references available upon request.
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